A temporary detention involves a police officer holding and questioning an individual for a short amount of time. The police only need reasonable suspicion for a temporary detention. Detentions may be accompanied by some form of search or frisk, though not all detentions involve a search. Detentions can be dispatched in response to a call or initiated by an officer.
## Scale for 'fill' is already present. Adding another scale for 'fill', which
## will replace the existing scale.
This analysis is based on records of temporary detentions made by the City of Charlottesville Police. The data was received in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by Jeff Fogel made over multiple time periods. We have aggregated the data to two primary time periods: 15.4
Navigate to additional pages for further analysis:
## Joining, by = "BEAT_NO"
## Adding missing grouping variables: `RACE`
## Warning: Using alpha for a discrete variable is not advised.
## Warning: Removed 1 rows containing missing values (geom_bar).
## Warning: Removed 1 rows containing missing values (geom_text).
Trends:
The data does not record why police enter certain spaces, whether it is an officer-initiated discretionary stop or a response to a call. We also do not have data on whether or not a detainment led to an arrest. The offense listed is the reason the police officer recorded to justify the stop based on reasonable suspicion, not a determination that the offense occured. Beacuse of this, it is difficult to say that police detainments are an indicator of crime. Fewer detainments does not immediatley signify less crime in an area, just less police activity.
Below, we highlight three areas, a predominantly black residential space, a predominantly white residential space, and a public walking mall to investigate who police detain and where.
## # A tibble: 9 x 8
## # Groups: NAME, RACE [6]
## NAME BEAT_NO RACE SFTYPE Counts total RaceTot lab_pos
## <chr> <dbl> <fct> <chr> <dbl> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Martha Jefferson 8 Black STOP WITH SEARC… -2 6 -2 -4
## 2 Martha Jefferson 8 White Search WITHOUT … 3 6 4 6
## 3 Martha Jefferson 8 White STOP WITH SEARC… 1 6 4 6
## 4 "Prospect\\Orange… 21 Black Search WITHOUT … -7 29 -22 -24
## 5 "Prospect\\Orange… 21 Black STOP WITH SEARC… -15 29 -22 -24
## 6 "Prospect\\Orange… 21 White STOP WITH SEARC… 7 29 7 9
## 7 Ridge St 12 Black Search WITHOUT … -8 75 -64 -66
## 8 Ridge St 12 Black STOP WITH SEARC… -56 75 -64 -66
## 9 Ridge St 12 White STOP WITH SEARC… 11 75 11 13
Historically, racial covenants prohibited Black individuals from living in the Martha Jefferson and Locust Grove. That legacy continues today
The Downtown Mall is a public space for free use by Charlottesville residents.